Hard News by Russell Brown

This week's US midterm elections are inescapably a referendum on Donald Trump's presidency, and would have been so even if he hadn't gone to such lengths to make it that way.

The closing campaign ad that was so racist and mendacious that even Fox News stopped airing it? It was made at Trump's order after he rejected a more conventional effort focusing on the economy. As RNZ's Tim Watkin observes of one of the final campaign rallies, the candidates for whom Trump was supposedly stumping were mere bit players in the production.

The expectation is that the Democratic Party will regain the House of Representatives and pick up some key governorships, but that there probably aren't enough seats in play for control of the Senate to change hands. But so polarised is the country and so broken its electoral system that according to Nate Silver, the Democrats will need to win between eight and nine per cent more votes nationally to be sure of taking the house.

Here's a guide to the various poll closing times. Turnout and America's broken voting machinery might make for a long wait for tallies to be delivered (everyone waiting in line at the time a polling place officially closes must be allowed to vote), but things should start getting interesting from about 1pm.

I'm taking the afternoon off my other work and a journalist buddy is coming over to watch things unfold with me. I'll make BLTs for lunch and we'll try and stay off the beers until later. We'll watch CNN and read the major newspaper sites, plus Talking Points Memo and FiveThirtyEight. I might have a look at an MSNBC stream and perhaps, later on, some Fox News for the lols.

If you do Twitter, I'll be tweeting a lot at @publicaddress. I'll also swing back here and update things through the day. Please do feel free to chip in with observations, updates and interesting links.

Meanwhile, my New Zealand-resident American friends have already voted, weeks ago – paradoxically, it's easier for them to do so from here than it will be for many people to vote at their local polling today – and are seriously considering just starting on the bourbon to ease their nerves. They feel what Barack Obama said this week: that the character of their nation is on the ballot.

It was always on the cards that Jacinda Ardern's first conference keynote as Labour Party leader would contain a significant policy announcement; a reward for the people in the room, an underlining of her government's brand. What's pleasing is that the promise of 600 new learning support coordinators in New Zealand schools not only addresses a critical need, it hasn't just been pulled from a hat.

The commitment was foreshadowed in the draft Disability and Learning Support Action Plan that was released by associate Education minister Tracey Martin in September. The basics of the co-called Learning Support Delivery Model are explained here. Essentially, the new coordinators will take the pressure off teaching staff – who have been obliged to load special education oversight onto their other duties – and provide a consistent point of contact for families.

The key will be in the execution – and particularly in actually finding 600 people with the necessary skills (these are not just teacher aides). But it's something that teacher unions have been calling for and it fulfills a commitment in the governing support agreement with the Green Party, as well as rightly validating Martin's longstanding and authentic engagement with special education issues. Ardern's Labour has sometimes contorted itself with the effort of making New Zealand First feel important, but this is something good and substantial.

Even Nikki Kaye, speaking on behalf of the National Party, welcomed the announcement, albeit with a bit of a side-eye about the commitment being made without formal Cabinet approval, perhaps to fend off the threat of more teacher strikes. Fair enough.

Unfortunately, one of Kaye's colleagues missed the moment by a long, long way.

There is so much wrong with this tweet. Business owners are not the only taxpayers – far from it – and not the only New Zealanders with a claim on policy. Some of them also have children who do need more than the education system has been able to provide. I'm one of them.

We got to see the best and worst of special education provision when our two autistic children passed through school. And we were lucky – our older son (on our very persuasive written appeal) was granted ORS funding, something he'd never get now. By contrast, we had to pull his younger brother out of formal education altogether, and to battle a bullying special education caseworker who simply had no grasp on his condition. The flexibility in approaches promised under the new plan might have kept him in school back then.

Responding to a speech with that education announcement as its centrepiece by making a false distinction between "risk takers" who pay the bills and the grasping recipients of the "largesse" was misleading, callous and petty.

Perhaps Woodhouse is just feeling unusually confident at the moment, having succeeded in torturing Immigration minister Iain Lees-Galloway over the decision to allow a Czech criminal to stay in New Zealand. The background story is complicated and it may be, as Tuariki Delamere suggested, that Karel Sroubek's case should never have come across Lees-Galloway's desk – because Woodhouse or one of the last government's other Immigration ministers should have deported him years ago. (Essentially, Woodhouse is insisting that Lees-Galloway should go because he didn't demand the right information from officials, while absolving himself because he ... didn't get the right information from officials.)

But here's the thing: National doesn't actually believe that Lees-Gallowway has committed a resigning offence, although it will be delighted that one or two of the more biddable commentators have taken the bait. So far as I know, no actual harm has occured as a result of Sroubek not being deported. That will likely remain the case until the decision is reversed on receipt of further information. For all the professed outrage at someone getting something they didn't deserve, it's petty.

Even when there was a major policy at stake in the Kiwibuild rollout, one Opposition MP, Judith Collins, managed to make it mean and petty. One of  the 20 couples to come out of the Kiwibuild lottery wound up being the subject of some quite nasty online bullying, with which she engaged, even though they had done nothing wrong and even though they met the eligibility criteria published months ago. But, again, the core of the narrative constructed out of their pillaged social media profiles was someone had got something they didn't deserve.

Perhaps the government shouldn't have offered up the couple to journalists, perhaps it should have seen that their past travel and their future earning prospects might have made them seem undeserving. I'm not sure about that. But I am quite sure that Lees-Galloway could have made a much better fist of his own situation. Hiding behind a pole to avoid reporters? Really? In the end, his evasiveness gave the story legs and has done him more political damage than the decision itself. It's been unlovely to watch.

If it couldn't find a way to stop the Immigration minister from self-harming, the government did know that the Prime Minister's star-power would wash away the story for a few days at least, and that's what we saw yesterday. But you can't do that every week. It may be that the secret to getting everyone to focus on the big vision for more of the time is some vastly better political management of the small things. 

You can't have followed beat-based music in New Zealand for the last 15 years without being at least peripherally aware of Julien Dyne, but he's been particularly in my ear lately, with his work on the Avantdale Bowling Club album (and current national tour) and his intriguing show with Jonathan Crayford as Two Farben at The Other's Way.

But, most of all, it's his album, Teal. There have been two local albums I've repeatedly reached for me to help me through doing stuff this year. One of them is by The Beths, and the other is this one. Just listen to what's going on rhythmically in the Ladi6-led single, 'Hours' (released in July last year, which gives some idea of how long this project has been in the works).

It's like that on every track, from the shimmering afrobeat of 'What You Say', featuring Mara TK, to the ducking-and-diving of the instrumental title track. I'm calling it now: if Troy Kingi's album was last year's welcome to summer, this year it's Teal.

It's on your streaming service, or you can buy the high-quality files and vinyl version (there are still some copies of the first pressing in local shops, I think) here on Bandcamp. You might also wish to get along to Two Farben's performance of the album at Anthology Lounge on the 17th.

You can also catch Julien and Melodownz for free at this month's 95bFM Drive Island at the Ellen Melville Centre. (I think the times on the bFM page are wrong, given that the event itself runs 4-7pm)

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Speaking of Ladi6, there's a great new profile of her and her story on Audioculture, by Bridie Chetwin-Kelly. Reading it took me back a few years (quite a few) to when I booked her (and Parks) for several Public Address events. It all came out of seeing Ladi take her turn on the mic late one night  with Fat Freddy's Drop. I thought, there's something going on here.

So she and Parks played the very first Great Blend, at the Grey Lynn Bowling Club in 2004, and by the time they came on quite a few people had left. It was a Sunday and the late sun was reaching across the greens and into the room. There might not even have been any beats – just Ladi singing and Parks on acoustic guitar and backing vocals (the man has a sweet voice). As I recall, I actually cried.

Ladi's currently on the road in Europe with the Freddies. Next weekend, they play two nights at the Brixton Academy. She's also on several of their days of their New Zealand summer tour, including the big kahuna at Western Springs on January 19.

And she's also part of an impressive bill at Wondergarden on New Year's Eve.

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The programme for the 2019 Auckland Arts Festival has been announced and the part of the music lineup I'm most interested in isn't any of the visiting artists, but the news that Anthonie Tonnon's A Synthesised Universe, currently doing an encore season at the Dunedin planetarium, is coming to the Stardome:

Critically acclaimed musician Anthonie Tonnon performs while Stardome’s planetarium is operated in real time; using Stardom as a kind of visual instrument to evoke the vastness of the cosmos. Alongside custom animations by Andrew Charlton, Tonnon performs on a storied 1968 electric guitar and a new Wellington-designed synthesizer-sampler which also controls the lights, making this a multi-sensory experience.

Elsewhere, Neko Case in the Spiegeltent looks pretty good, as does Candian alt R&B project Rhye in the same venue. Beach House and Four Tet both play the Town Hall – very welcome bookings, but I'm not sure either of them would play a room that size on a conventional tour. Arts festivals do attract people who don't usually go to gigs, so we'll see.

Waiata Māori get a really significant showcase, in Tōku Reo Waita, a Town Hall show creative-directed by Tama Waipara and featuring Stan Walker, Annie Crummer, Hinewehi Mohi, Moana Maniapoto, Maisey Rika, Rob Ruha, Tami Neilson, Seth Haapu, Maimoa, Whirimako Black and others. It's nice to see affordable pricing for kids there – and also to see Tira, a free singalong with some of the same artists, opening the festival in Aotea Square.

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The Jungle Brothers have been added to the bill for Splore 2019, which is excellent news. If you want to know why they matter, check out the 'Do the Knowledge' episode from the second season of Hip Hop Evolution currently on Netflix. I've been finding this new season even more engrossing than the first.

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A unique and unusual musical event was recently brought back into the light with RNZ's recent re-broadcast of Straw People's 1998 session in the Helen Young studio with Victoria Kelly and members of the Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra. You can listen to it here.

New Leisure single – the first in a long time – 'Feeling Free'. It's well groovy. Listening links here.

Local rapper of the moment Melodownz has a new video, which he talks about here. It's from an EP out later this month, which features appearances from Louis Baker, Troy Kingi and others.

 He's also on the new Yoko-Zuna single, which is a taster for the forthcoming album Voyager. Yoko-Zuna have an exhibition of art by the album's sleeve designer Lyle Hawthorne that's also a pop-up store for their stuff. This seems to be a trend and it's one I'm very much here for:

Marlon Williams is doing a show with the Auckland Philharmonic Orchestra at Villa Maria in January.

And Delaney Davidson is playing a free lunchtime show at Flying Out Records next Thursday, 12.30-1pm.

A new video fom the wild souls who are Orchestra of Spheres:

This seems an interesting idea: the forthcoming cinematic musical Daffodils features "re-imaginings" of a hitlist of iconic New Zealand songs by everyone from Bic Runga to Chris Knox and The Clean. This is the new teaser trailer:

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Whoop! The BBC seems to be happy to let all three episodes of its recent dance music history Can You Feel It: How Dance Music Conquered the World stay on YouTube. It's earnestly kind about everything – even the rise of risible stadium EDM – but it's still a wonderful watch, with great footage and interviews. Can't recommend it highly enough:

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Tunes!

The very productive Blair Parkes stays on his recent roll, with a lovely new song as Cardigan Bay available now ahead of a forthcoming album:

And you know how The Chills' Martin Phillipps often talks about how important Bowie is to him? Courtesy Darkstation, here's The Chills slamming out 'Rebel Rebel' at The Gluepot in 1990. Nice!

I watched the BBC News Our World report What's Killing America's White Men? pretty much by accident last night, but was immediately drawn in. It meshed with Beth Macy's book about the US opioid crisis, Dopesick, which I've just finished reading. And it seemed to have something to say about the horrors of the past week.

Essentially, while suicide rates in most western countries have decreased over the past two decades, in America, the rate is up by a third. And one group is driving the increase: white, middle-aged men. This isn't the set-up for a Twitter joke. Men, who have lost jobs, status, security and identity are killing themselves – most often, with the firearms that are usually at hand.

Presenter India Rakusen visits Missoula, Montana, a city which isn't doing badly: unemployment is only 3.7% and it has a strong university. It's not a rust-belt town. But its economy has moved away from a reliance on timber – and change, as the mayor explains to Rakusen, has left many men without a sense of who they are.

Rauksen concludes by speaking to a sympathetic character: Russell, a 63 year-old man who has lived in his family home for more than 40 years, struggling with depression for much of that time.

"This is a tough country to live in," he tells her. "If you're not a competitive person, and I'm not, it's not easy. Americans like a winner. They don't like people who aren't winners. All our lives, we're given this false notion of American superiority, that we're supposed to be superhuman."

In Montana, he says, "there's a level of terror among people, as they work longer and they fall farther and farther behind."

In the past week, America has been forced to look at two other middle-aged men. The 56 year-old pipe-bomber Cesar Sayoc, who embraced the cult of Trump after his mother – apparently unable to cope any longer with his untreated mental illness – finally kicked him out of the house in 2015. He delivered pizza and his business ventures seem to have been largely fantasy. And 46 year-old Robert Bowers, the monster who slaughtered elderly Jews in Pittburgh. He lived with his grandfather until the grandfather died five years ago. He was apparently jobless and, according to a childhood friend, had lived his life "like a ghost".

The answer, clearly, isn't the restoration of whatever privilege men like these have lost, or any attempt – and the Republican mid-term campaign has seen plenty of it – to blame people from different worlds for their loss. It's certainly not to try and rationalise their crimes.

But it's impossible not to feel that the American problems forced into everyone's face this past week run very, very deep. And that the solutions offered by large elements of America's political culture stand to make things much, much worse.

I went to Eden Park for the first time in several years on Saturday. I used to go all the time, but I'd become disillusioned with Auckland rugby at both Super and provincial level – the turning point, ironically, was the year I bought a Blues season ticket – and my former rugby buddies had moved away, or just moved on. I wasn't someone who went to sports events any more.

But when Auckland Rugby announced that the Mitre 10 Cup final would be free to enter, I heard a rallying call. Against all predictions, my underperforming team had finished the premiership season at the top of the table, playing courageous and focused team rugby, usually to modest crowds. Perhaps it would be proper to acknowledge that.

It turned out that my sometime DJ buddy and fellow journalist Alan Perrott was thinking the same thing. So we resolved to go. We met at the Portland Public House an hour before kick-off. When I rode my bike up Portland street, there were still several parking spaces open, which didn't seem a great omen, and while there were people in the bar and outside on the Kingsland strip, it wasn't exactly thronging. (By the way, I discovered the covered bike parking at Kingsland station – it's under the pedestrian overbridge, to the left of the toilet block.)

We set out for the park about 3.30pm and weren't alone on the journey. It wasn't a test match crowd, but it was a group of people with a common purpose. There was a bloke outside in an umpire's chair whose main job appeared to be just welcoming everyone to the ground. It seemed a nice, quirky touch.

After we passed through the turnstiles, stewards were telling people to head for the West stand, which seemed odd. It turned out that organisers had kept half the park closed in order to concentrate the crowd in the ASB stand. That was almost full, so they were overflowing to the two end-on stands.

We did find seats, including one for Alan's mate to join us, in the ASB stand, and if you kept the empty South stand out of the picture, it looked like a bit of a happening.

Alan went to get us a beer. I may have been a bit dazed (the night before had been a late one with old friends who live high in the Waitekeres), but I'd been there about 10 minutes before I realised The Feelers were playing. Sure, I'd been somewhat aware of there being Feelers songs, in the way one is aware of there being Feelers songs at the supermarket or on hold to a government department. But there they were, chugging away on a little stage over at the  half-way line.

I actually don't want this to be some variation on a Feelers joke. It was good of Auckland Rugby to put on free music before the free game. I don't begrudge the band a payday either. But they really were the wrong booking.

Although, like Alan and I, most of the crowd could have afforded tickets, there seemed to be quite a few family groups taking advantage of the offer. And a lot of those kids were brown kids. That's important, because the Auckland team's coaching staff and and core players are Pasifika and Māori too. That's the Auckland the the union should be looking to capture, and here they were. Presenting them with the whitest band in the land, whose last chart single was 12 years ago, just didn't fit the picture.

It became evident that one problem with the day's seating configuration was that hardly anyone had a view of the larger of the ground's two video screens. The other one, diagonally opposite us at the corner of the South and East stands, looked awfully small to my ageing eyes. Also, since the park was remodelled for the World Cup, the ASB stand is quite a long way from the touchline. To make matters worse, the play would run resolutely away from us for much of the game. It seemed a conscious effort to stay engaged at times.

Auckland were awful in the first half. The occasion seemed to be messing with players' heads. They made poor decisions and dropped or kicked away the ball almost as soon as they won it. A team that had muscled it up the middle of the park all season was suddenly trying to outflank Canterbury direct from set piece, and it wasn't working. Individual decision-making was a shambles.

But they held on in defence, and for quite a long time, Canterbury's smooth, structured attack could find no way through. Then it did, and again, and after 32 minutes Auckland were down 17-0 and I presumably wasn't the only one wondering if I'd leg it during the second half and beat the rain. The more so given that Canterbury's second try, a penalty try awarded against Akira Ioane for collapsing a maul at the end of an exhuasting spell of goal-line defence, came with a sin-binning.

When Auckland did score a try, it wasn't through anything like structured, patient play. On almost their only trip to Canterbury's 22, they forced an offside penalty. The obvious thing to do was kick it and at least get some points on the board. But TJ Faiane made a quick tap and was held up a couples of metres from line when he offloaded the ball to Manu, screaming up on his left, to crash over. Even when Canterbury kicked a late penalty, it seemed like 20-7 held some hope for a miracle second half.

In the meantime, the forecast rain had begun. The Feelers toiled away under cover during the break, not helping the mood. And increasingly, the gloom was more than philosphical. There was no sign of the ground lighting coming into play and I wondered how dark it was going to be by full time.

Something else had happened. Although most of the crowd was well-sheltered (the weather was coming from the north, behind the ASB stand), people in the West and East stands were getting wet. Whoever was in charge noticed, and stewards opened the gates to the empty South stand. All but a half-dozen diehards in the West stand took up the offer. It was a good gesture, one that said that Auckland Rugby was thinking about its supporters, and its maybe not something that would have happened in past seasons.

Auckland scored again – another quick tap! – after, for the first time in the match, actually hanging onto the ball for a few minutes. By this time, the rain had become very heavy indeed. It was thick, tropical Auckland rain and it seemed that Auckland knew how to play in it better than the visitors did. They started muscling it up the middle like they had not done in the first half.

Canterbury scored again and with 20 minutes to go, a 14-point lead was looking pretty good for them. Thirteen minutes later the scores were level and it was Auckland looking to close it out. The ground DJ had finally found the hip hop playlist and an Auckland crowd was well over the line into enthusiasm. To match the mood, the lights finally came on and the play became a lot easier to watch.

Auckland thumped away in front of the posts as the minutes ticked away. "DROP GOAL!" said everyone in the crowd. But it seemed they couldn't find the confidence to take their moment. And a second after the full-time hooter, one of the forwards dropped the bloody ball.

It was quickly announced that there would be two 10-minute halves of extra time. That didn't start well. Canterbury scored a try and drew ahead. Auckland equalised, again from close range. What hardly anyone at the ground knew was that that's all Auckland needed to do. If the game finished at 33-33, they, as the team with the most tries, would win. It didn't come to that. After trying all game to get behind the Canterbury defence on the outside, Auckland finally actually did it. Melani Nanai scorched down the field and got the ball away to Fukofuka to score. 40-33.

After an agonising four minutes, in which Harry Plummer missed a penalty that woud have put it beyond doubt and the ball changed hands several times, it was over. Auckland had secured what had at one point seemed a vanishingly unlikely victory. The Auckland bench charged onto the pitch like madmen, slipping over on the flooded turf like they didn't even care.

The rest of us barely knew ourselves. Outside the gate, a car full of young guys went past, honking and cheering. We shouted back at them. It was all very unlike an Auckland crowd. But in the course of an afternoon that seemed to go on forever, perhaps we'd changed.

By the time I got to my bike, the rain was getting heavier again, and I got pretty soaked on the short ride back to Point Chev. But I didn't really care. There were dry clothes and a curry I'd prepared earlier waiting for me, and an All Black test on the telly. I knew I'd been there for a day at Eden Park that people would talk about for a long time.

So how did it go for Auckland Rugby? You'd have to say it was a success. One sportswriter suggested that a crowd of anything less than 30,000 for a free game would be a flop. But that's not realistic. For goodness sake, Canterbury didn't crack 10,000 at their own home final last year. And we're into Auckland's events season, when there's a lot of competition for dollars, time and attention most weekends.

Herding us all into one stand was a good call, as was opening the South stand to let everyone stay dry after the rain started. The weather put paid to a plan to allow  kids onto the ground afterwards – and the idea of families pinicking in the middle of the ground and watching the test on the big screen clearly wasn't a starter. I'm not sure if it ever was, but it did show an organisation thinking about the people it was serving.

One key problem remains, even with the team winning. Eden Park is too bloody big, especially since the World Cup upgrade. A 20,000-strong crowd wouldn't have generated much atmosphere spread around the ground and that's sort of ridiculous. I get the arguments against spending money (or handing over land) for a new stadium, but gee, a 30,000-capacity ground in the city would be great. Even better, a rectangular football ground, with seating right up to the touchline. (If they can play test cricket at Western Springs, why not all cricket?)

On some level, Eden Park is the problem. It feels corporate and concreted. There's a whiff of white elephant. It's a very difficult to place to build a community. But any resolution to that is a long way off yet.

For now, Auckland Rugby and its CEO and board should feel happy with their experiment. They should be thinking how they can make things even better next year – and the Blues should be paying attention too. Tap into the city's young, vibrant cultures, put on entertainment that reflects that. Keep finding ways to deal with the size of the stadium. Maybe do some mad stuff. I can remember the NPC games where the cheerleaders would arrive on the back of Harley Davidsons and skydivers would swoop in and land  between the uprights. Focus on being there for the fans and not just the sponsors and boxholders. And keep ticket prices reasonable.

Congratulations, finally, to the Auckland players and their coach Alama Ieremia. It's been a remarkable season, one in which I, a disaffected fan, gradually came home. They'd been a long time in the wilderness and it felt like nearly everyone was pleased to see them back. The Taranaki union tweeted congratulations, Steve Hansen made a point of praising them in his post-test match interview.

I promise I'll come to more games next year. Hell, I might even go and see the Blues.